


losing never gets easier

by whalers



Series: for what binds us [3]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-17 00:02:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11263779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalers/pseuds/whalers
Summary: Whalers can go off for days on missions. That’s why no one pays much mind to Malon’s absence until the day of the drop-off rolls around and he’s still not back. They don’t dare to think that the same thing that happened to Sanders will happen to him.; a funeral for the first whaler, though definitely not the first funeral.





	losing never gets easier

Whalers can go off for days on missions. That’s why no one pays much mind to Malon’s absence until the day of the drop-off rolls around and he’s still not back. They don’t dare to think that the same thing that happened to Sanders will happen to him. Malon is one of the most stealthy of the whalers, if not _the_ stealthiest. Training directly under Daud definitely has his perks, but it seems even those skills prove futile against the overseers.

Daud sends a small team of three out to Holger Square to hopefully retrieve a body. Using the arcane bond to summon Sanders’s lifeless, nearly decapitated body last time had caused a frenzy and he’s not about to risk that again. He’ll never be able to describe how it had felt, tugging at the void and having it practically _scream_ back at him how _wrong wrong wrong_ it was deliver a body with no soul. He still doesn’t understand exactly how the arcane bond still worked; he tried he on a whim, giving into Rulfio’s suggestions (“try summoning him, shouldn’t it work?”) and while it was one of the worst decisions of his life, it left him with a lot of questions. The Outsider is never any help with anything. All he does is appear in his dreams and smile that leering smile and get a little too close for comfort and, sometimes, tells him about the void or how one of his missions will affect a future event. That terrible night, the Outsider avoided him entirely, and has repeatedly ignored every inquiry about that night since then.

Pavel had suggested that Sanders’ soul had lingered just long enough for Daud to be able to summon him, but Daud doesn’t understand how something like that can be possible. He tries not to think about it and waits with the others for the team to arrive. There’s low chatter among the group. He thinks Aeolos might be on the verge of tears. Billie seems unaffected and vanishes early on; she’s never been particularly close to many of the others. Or perhaps she’s opting deal with the near-definite loss of yet another whaler on her own. He can’t be certain with her. He hears Jenkins cursing her name in the corner of the room.

Andrei, Javier, and Tynan return right at midnight, empty handed. Even with the masks on, their emotions are clear as day. Somber. Defeated. Mourning yet another lost sibling.

“Mission report.”

“We found his mask and an audiograph,” Andrei says. To his credit, his voice only wavers slightly. “They’d captured him and were interrogating him,” the _about you_ goes unsaid. The overseers are always jumping at the chance to torture the answers out of heretics so they can convert them, or in their case, so they can finally find Daud and dispose of him. They must have been thrilled to finally catch a whaler, only for their excitement to fall short. “But he ended his life before they could get anything from him. His death was quick.”

Someone’s crying, heart wrenching sobs that seem to start a ripple effect throughout the group (it’s Aeolos, it has to be, and now some of the others are crying and he doesn’t want to hear this). Tynan rips off his mask and throws it at the wall. He tangles his fingers into his hair and seems to bite down a yell. Javier slowly takes off his mask and clutches it tightly, lips moving in some silent prayer. Rulfio disappears and reappears moments later with Malon’s foot locker. They all know what’s next. This time, there’s no body to bury or send off down the river. Not even his whaler mask. All they have are Malon’s belongings. Another empty bunk.

They don’t all file outside at once. It doesn’t take as long to rally everyone as last time, but it does take several minutes to calm down the ones who are crying too hard to breathe, let alone walk outside to start the ceremony. No one rushes anyone. Daud stands silently beside Rulfio, who cries silent tears of his own that drip onto Malon’s foot locker. Daud’s chest feels like someone is twisting a knife inside it. If this is how it’s going to feel every time they lose one of the family, he isn’t sure he can deal with it (he has to, they all have to, but no one told him losing these kids would hurt so much). They’re all just _kids_ , and even the older ones like Malon don’t deserve this. Daud knows more than anyone that life isn’t fair, but having any of the whalers die seems cruel even by the world’s standards (he isn’t sure why he thinks this. they all chose this life of their own accord. they knew what they were getting into. but it still feels like his fault. it still feels too cruel to take away one of them).

 

* * *

 

The air outside feels too cold. The clouds have swallowed up the sun and rain is in the air. The clouds hold their breath, as if waiting for the ceremony to end before they open up and cry alongside everyone standing by the water.

“His name was Malon. He was the first whaler. He will never be forgotten.” Rulfio’s voice seems to echo throughout the Flooded District. The air is too still. It makes their crying sound louder.

“I never even got to apologize to him,” Aedan’s voice is barely heard over the heartbroken cries of Aeolos and the others. Javier hushes him, grips his arm tightly, whispers, “ _he knows_ ,” but it still isn’t enough. It’ll never be enough.

“He’s with Sanders now. They can finally be at peace.” Pavel is one of the few who isn’t crying, but his expression is somber, his eyes downcast. Quinn doesn’t feel it’s enough. Many of them don’t. It’s never enough with Pavel. He’s too detached, he’s too _weird_ , even more so than some of the former overseers who can never quite get rid of the rigid posture and vacant stare that was drilled into them. He’s just never quite fit in with the rest of them. He’s the perfect target for the anger spurred on by their grief. They start rounding on him.

“ _Shut your mouth!_ You never even cared about either of them!” she cries, shoving Pavel so hard he falls back against Dimitri and they’re sent crashing to the ground. Dimitri, who is also not crying though looks as if the life has been drained from him, barely makes a grunt, and makes no effort to push Pavel off him. Pavel gazes up at Quinn steadily.

“You didn’t even know Sanders’s first name until he died. You have no right to say that to me.”

The arguing starts to drown out the crying. Rulfio knows he should go over to stop it. He tells himself to _move_ , get in between the five of them and Pavel before they bruise his paper white skin and break his ribs, but his body doesn’t listen. He can’t take his blurry eyes off the grimy water in front of him. Malon didn’t have to die. He shouldn’t have died. He was one the best whalers, and not just in terms of skill. He was a genuinely good person, which can’t be said for a lot of them. He broke up way more fights than he ever started, he seemed to always know what to say to get the more volatile whalers to calm down (even if he received bruises in the process), he taught Rulfio the proper way to hold a knife and to creep along the shadows silently. He brought home pastries and even dabbled in baking some himself when he had the time. He was a _good_ person, and fighting when they should be honoring his memory is disgusting but he _can’t move_. The grief is weighing him down, rooting him to the spot.

“ _Stop!_ ” Dimitri, still sprawled on the ground, presses his fists hard against his eyes. Still no tears come. Tears never come for him. He wishes he could cry, maybe it’d alleviate all _this_ . It feels so suffocating. “Y’all here fightin’ when we should be talkin’ ‘bout the good shit we ‘member ‘bout him! Fuckin’ assholes, the lot of ya-- if you wanna be angry at someone, fine, go ahead, but do it _after_ and direct it at someone who _really_ doesn’t care.” It’s not quite silence that follows, the crying still continues, but that unspoken name ripples through the crowd and it feels like the air becomes that much more still. Thunder rumbles too loud overhead. The clouds aren’t going to wait forever.

“Are we ready?” Rulfio manages, after about a minute more of tense not quite-silence.

There’s a murmur of agreement. They file back into line again, standing at the edge of the water. The mood is perhaps more solemn now than it was before. The foot locker feels too heavy in his hands. He doesn’t want to drop it. That would be more disrespectful than the arguing and would cut their ceremony short but it’s so _heavy_ and his fingers are slipping and grief is so heavy in his chest and threatens to bubble out of his throat and _who’s next_? He doesn’t want to lose anyone else.

Bigger, more worn and calloused hands enter his blurred field of vision and gently take the foot locker, holding it securely. No matter how much he tries to wipe the tears away, they keep falling, but he can see it’s Daud, standing in between him and Aeolos. Javier is the only thing keeping Aeolos from collapsing to the ground.

“Malon was the first whaler I took in.” Daud’s voice is the same forced steady that Rulfio has been going for but failed immensely. There aren’t any tears, but they can all hear the sorrow lining his words. “I found him like I found most of you, on the streets, trying to survive. He proved himself to be the stealthiest whaler I have ever trained. We may not have been as close in recent years, but he will never be forgotten.”

“He will never be forgotten,” they echo back.

“I loved him more than anything,” Aeolos is whispering in a broken voice. Rulfio has read so many stories, sitting on the damp floor of the dorms, Jasper pressed close to his side, stories upon stories of love and heartbreak and even people dying of a broken heart and he’s never quite believed the latter but now he thinks it might be true. Aeolos looks like he might die and Rulfio’s heart can’t take it. No more death, please. He tries so hard to swallow down his sobs but Aeolos talking in that broken voice about how much Malon meant to him and how he didn’t deserve to die push him over the edge and the only reason he doesn’t buckle under the weight of all this sorrow is Thomas pressing him close to his side to hold him steady.

“It’s not fair,” he says through his sobs, though trying to keep his voice quiet. Everything sounds so loud and yet not at all. “It’s not _fair_.”

“I know,” Thomas murmurs, voice strained.

Most whalers (thankfully not too many and none as terrible as Sanders’s death) die in combat or, less commonly, from a botched transversal. It’s always terrible. It always hurts. But there’s always a body. The only time before this that they couldn’t go and retrieve the body themselves was with Sanders, him being trapped in room with three dead overseers around him, the one who actually ended his life nowhere to be seen. But as traumatizing as it was for Daud to listen to Rulfio’s stupid advice to use the arcane bond to bring him home and having the nearly decapitated body of their brother appear right in front of them, _there was still a body_. There’s no body this time. Malon will never get a proper funeral. Rulfio hopes that the overseers didn’t feed him to the hounds. Malon deserves better than that. Will his soul ever be able to rest? Is he lingering in the Abbey, haunting the halls, or is that just fairy tale?

Thomas squeezes him tightly and he opens his eyes, trying to blink away tears, watching as Daud leans down to place the foot locker into the water. It floats downstream and they watch until it inevitably sinks. They file back inside, some quicker than others, some not at all. Aeolos will stay there for hours, until Javier carries him back inside lest he succumb to the cold and rain and come down with a sickness he fears so much. The ones who lingered with him will be ushered inside as well. Rulfio retires to his bunk, pushing it against Thomas’s and curling up beside him, Rinaldo crying quietly on Thomas’s other side.

No more missions for the rest of the night. He doesn’t even think Daud continues any of his work.

They should be used to death, he thinks later that night. It hasn’t stopped raining since the ceremony ended. The chill is seeping in through the cracks in the walls they can never quite seal, the rain pounding against the windows and the roofs. The room is damper than usual. There’s a steady _dripdrip_ in the corner. People are still crying. It’s a quiet, defeated sort of crying that will continue for days. He wonders, not for the first time, why it’s so easy for them to take lives, but once it happens to them, it feels like a piece of their world has crumbled away.

**Author's Note:**

> this pained me to write. i was originally going to write the second part in Aeolos's pov but somehow it turned into Rulfio.
> 
> 1\. i had inspiration from other fics for this.  
> 2\. Malon is nonbinary, that's why they call him sibling instead of brother. he uses he/they pronouns. he's also Dishonored's version of French (meaning Montgomery is too).  
> 3\. Malon is the whaler that Corvo finds the audiograph for in the High Overseer Campbell mission.  
> 4\. any fics with Malon present obviously take place before this!  
> 5\. Sanders is the first whaler to die and i may write something about him but i'm not sure if anyone would be interested?  
> 6\. a lot of people seem to write Daud as uncaring towards the whalers but i firmly believe he's affected by each one that dies. these are his kids. he took them in himself. he may not be very close to all of them, but he still cares for them. some deaths affect him more than others. since Malon was the first whaler he took in, he cared for him a lot.  
> 7\. Jasper is another character of mine. she's a thief and one of Daud's informants who live near the Old Dunwall Distillery.
> 
> i've never really wrote a funeral scene before and i'm not the best at this because my emotions are. irregular. so if there's anything i could work on let me know! leave a kudos if you liked it. ;v;/


End file.
